Space Combat - Armor

Disclaimer: Damage sustained to your power suit while crushing your enemies throats is not covered under warranty, and IDC will in no way be held responsible.

Space is a harsh mistress, or so the saying goes. In the following pages we hope to provide you with just means of doing that. While some of the following armors could quite easily be used to kill someone, their primary purpose is defense. Besides, damage sustained to your power suit while crushing your enemies throats is not covered under warranty.

Additional Ideas (9)

Akratek's Nano-Patching Flightsuit

This suit was made in response to the problems associated with ejecting out of an exploding dogfighter. Often times a pilot's suit would be torn or ruptured by shrapnel, and while many companies were making flightsuits that were harder to tear and exponentially more expensive, Akratek invested in lacing a small army of cheap nanites into a standard flightsuit. The results were well past what had been hoped for, and after nearly 2 centuries of use, this flightsuit is still used in quite a few navies, and by many a pirate due to it's relative cheapness and the fact that it can be worn under most other type of armor to provide a second barrier against suit punctures.

This powersuit produced by IDC is one of the finest legally available non-military suits on the market. Using high-density polymers for the joins, ceramics over the arms and legs, and high quality metal shielding, with a thin magnetic field to provide additional protection, as well as much more maneuverability than the competitors' powersuits.

Though rendered largely obsolete by powered armor, there are still a large number of these suits in use throughout the universe. Loosely molded to the intended user's body, this armor consists of semi-rigid, high-density polymers. Its designs are easy to modify, and it's highly resistant to both stresses and laser damage. Its adaptability and ease of use has lead this to be a favorite among those new to the trade of piracy or bounty hunting.

Ubiquitously worn by the ship's maintenance personnel, this jacket does little more than slow down heat loose (or gain) and protect from flying shrapnel. It has a small pouch over both the chest and the back where metal plates can be put to further chance of survival in case if something blows up, or you get shot with a projectile weapon.

This heavy battle suit is the chosen armor of the elite shock troops of the Federan, prized for the mobile fortress it turns individual soldiers into. Unfortunately, the expense and difficulty of the construction means that the majority of soldiers must make do with lesser sets.

The innermost portion of the Adamant Battle System is a fully contained environment suit, complete with waste removal system and 'direct nutrient injection system'. The small supply set inside combined with the ColdFuse(tm) microfusion generator can keep a normal man fully combat ready for three days, and typically, alive for a week in deep space, though he'll not be happy with the experience. Some regiments are known to use combat drugs through the injection system, primarily adrenaloids.

The carapase of the adamant battle system consists of many thin layers of material, an extremely difficult to produce composite of tungsten heavy alloy and cermet layers, all wrapped in Ultralar carbon-nanotube anti-ballistic fabric. Small electric field generators are embedded at strategic points in the armor, in order to create a particle-weapon dissipating current, and though this does create pin-point weaknesses in the overall suit, most troopers consider it worth it.

For mobility, the suit contains limited deep-space propulsion jets, which become unlimited jump-enhancement jets within atmosphere. Further, the armor's heavy nature is partially balanced by the weave of artificial muscle fabrics that are built into it, effectively creating servo-less powerarmor.

While the suit comes standard equipped with a retractable diamondine hand-to-hand combat blade, the primary armament is customizable, through one shoulder mount hardpoint designed to accept many standard heavy weapons, and two arm softpoints designed to accept most small arms weapons.

This lightly armored suit is designed to save the wearer from flash fire and explosive decompression. It is made of fairly durable puncture resistent fabric(not bullet proof, however)and has a special rapid self-assembling helmet. Upon detection of severe heat or pressure drop, it will quickly throw a polymer hood over the head of the wearer and simultaneously inflate to pressurize both suit and helmet. Oxygen is not used for inflation to reduce chance of fire, but a breathing tube is also provided. The suit uses a Oxygen recycler to extend the limited supply to 15 minutes.

Ceranan Subdermal Nanomolecular Protection System
Ceranan armor systems is pleased to announce the release of the first generation of Subdermal Nanomolecular Protection Systems. By rejecting the traditional ceramic and plastic plating used for most cybernetic armor systems, and instead using implanted ballistic balloons of newly developed nano-materials that stiffen in response to an electric field, as well as to ballistic shock, the SNPS is the first subdermal armor system to be able to mimic the normal texture of human flesh, while still providing all the protection you need beneath your skin, eliminating the cyber-soldier's problems with intimacy.

Ceramite Armor Plate
Unlike most armors, Ceramite plate is baked in massive kilns in preshaped plates. a mold is made in the shape of the armor plate needed and then it is filled with layer after later of metal screening. This is generally a hybrid allow of tungsten, iron, and copper. The box of wire mesh is then filled with a metal enriched clay slurry.

This entire mixture is allowed to air dry to hand firmness before it is vibrated to ensure proper settling and lack of airpockets before it is introduced into the kiln. It is fired inside the kiln for 84 hours at nearly 1700 degrees before the baked slabs are done. If there are air bubbles in a form, the sudden release of superheated gas often shatters the plate in question as well as causing signifigant collateral damage.

While generally bulkier than traditional roll hardened steel armors, ceramite is lighter and offers roughtly the same ballistic protection. It really shines when dealing with energized and laser weaponry. The material dissipates intense heat with ease, reducing the effectiveness of lasers, while the copper and tungsten elements are able to groun dour the explosive electric charges of particle weaponry.

Modern high end ceramic parts are generally made through a much more high-temperature friendly process - the base ceramic material is powdered, then spray-dried with a light hydrocarbon wax. It is then pressed to shape, and baked, with a long soak at a low temperature to rid the form of the wax before its final firing at whatever crazy temperature it goes to. The process can be reasonably friendly to embedded materials.

Soromon-Baphomet lucidfold field projecting battle suit
Rather than take the conventional approach to armor manufacture, the Soromon-Baphomet corporation decided to use their expertise in FTL technology to create the most advanced defensive system currently available. Using a small hyperdymensional Feinhleim fold engine, powered by the same powerplant as the Adamant Battle Systems Mark IV, it does not actually physically interact with the projectile. Instead, an on-board simultrex computer creates a localised hyperdimensional fold between the predicted point of impact and the predicted point of exit using the suit's sensor data, meaning that the projectile travels through hyperspace instead of through its intended target, leaving the other side without causing any harm to the lucidfold suit wearer.

Worn by the very best stealth operative, this suit can also be switched on to a super-low threshold mode, which deviates electromagnetic radiation through the wearer, in effect making him disappear, as no light is incident on the suit wearer.

The one downside of this technology is the energy requirements for every projectile deviated, which can easily mean that a careless operative could find himself with no armour in the intense heat of battle. because of this, the lucifold suit is often a grafted addition to a normal battlesuit. While it is powered, however, it makes the wearer completely immune to practically every attack. Rumours abound of the technology being deployed on starship, but no confirmation reports have ever been filed.

You can't 'step' with this on. It simply slide reality around you. If you had the velocity and turned the lucifold engine on, you can go straight through a meter thick concrete wall, through a hyperspace fold. Reality simply slides through the wearer. Its not invisibility per say, more like not being there at all. In atmosphere (and in fully transparent mode), the lucifold engine would works so hard to deviate all incoming particle that the power is drained in just a few short minutes. This is why the threshold is usually left at a high level, so the hyperspace fold is only deployed when the incident projectile/wavepacket reaches a particular energy level. This suit is rarely used for land-based operations, and far more often, it is worn in deep space ship boarding, by the heavy support troops, who blast through the hull, and then simply protect the breach. the stealth part comes in when these operatives are left around an incoming ship's path and ambush it, seemingly coming out of nowhere. because of their surprise, and the fact that they can often simply slide through conventional armour (at the cost of their power supply), you can often find that half a dozen operatives wearing the lucifold can neutralise a capital ship, simply by sliding into the bridge/engine room/weapon storage and planting charges.

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It's funny how both far, and how little, the technology of armor advances. When you break down to it, it's almost all 'put hard stuff between you and hit' or 'put flexible stuff that doesn't give way between you and hit'.

I have read a few reports of a new bullet proof material that some university has engineered. It is flexible kevlar and works far better than normal kevlar. it is the consitancy of cloth yet when an impact hits the cloth armor, the cells in the cloth harden to redirect the energy output from the hit so it doesn't penetrate the cloth. It is kind of sci-fi high tech but I'm sure it still hurts like hell.

A coworker of mine has created a new form of ceramic plate that protects as well, or better, than the majority of current body armor, similar to steel flak jacket plates ... except it's absurdly cheap, light, and heat resistant. No news article, and no details, sorry.